There is no BNF,
but you can paw your way through the yacc grammar in perly.y in the source distribution if you're particularly brave.
The grammar relies on very smart tokenizing code,
so be prepared to venture into toke.c as well.

In the words of Chaim Frenkel: "Perl's grammar can not be reduced to BNF.
The work of parsing perl is distributed between yacc,
the lexer,
smoke and mirrors."

$ for scalar values (number, string or reference)
@ for arrays
% for hashes (associative arrays)
& for subroutines (aka functions, procedures, methods)
* for all types of that symbol name. In version 4 you used them like
pointers, but in modern perls you can just use references.

There are couple of other symbols that you're likely to encounter that aren't really type specifiers:

<> are used for inputting a record from a filehandle.
\ takes a reference to something.

Note that <FILE> is neither the type specifier for files nor the name of the handle. It is the <> operator applied to the handle FILE. It reads one line (well, record--see "$/" in perlvar) from the handle FILE in scalar context, or all lines in list context. When performing open, close, or any other operation besides <> on files, or even when talking about the handle, do not use the brackets. These are correct: eof(FH), seek(FH, 0, 2) and "copying from STDIN to FILE".

Normally, a bareword doesn't need to be quoted, but in most cases probably should be (and must be under use strict). But a hash key consisting of a simple word (that isn't the name of a defined subroutine) and the left-hand operand to the => operator both count as though they were quoted:

Additionally, you can enable and disable categories of warnings. You turn off the categories you want to ignore and you can still get other categories of warnings. See perllexwarn for the complete details, including the category names and hierarchy.

{
no warnings 'uninitialized';
$a = $b + $c;
}

If you have an older version of Perl, the $^W variable (documented in perlvar) controls runtime warnings for a block:

Actually, they don't. All C operators that Perl copies have the same precedence in Perl as they do in C. The problem is with operators that C doesn't have, especially functions that give a list context to everything on their right, eg. print, chmod, exec, and so on. Such functions are called "list operators" and appear as such in the precedence table in perlop.

A common mistake is to write:

unlink $file || die "snafu";

This gets interpreted as:

unlink ($file || die "snafu");

To avoid this problem, either put in extra parentheses or use the super low precedence or operator:

(unlink $file) || die "snafu";
unlink $file or die "snafu";

The "English" operators (and, or, xor, and not) deliberately have precedence lower than that of list operators for just such situations as the one above.

Another operator with surprising precedence is exponentiation. It binds more tightly even than unary minus, making -2**2 product a negative not a positive four. It is also right-associating, meaning that 2**3**2 is two raised to the ninth power, not eight squared.

Although it has the same precedence as in C, Perl's ?: operator produces an lvalue. This assigns $x to either $a or $b, depending on the trueness of $maybe:

If you need to include C code or C library interfaces in your module, you'll need h2xs. h2xs will create the module distribution structure and the initial interface files you'll need. perlxs and perlxstut explain the details.

If you don't need to use C code, other tools such as ExtUtils::ModuleMaker and Module::Starter, can help you create a skeleton module distribution.

The easiest way to take over a module is to have the current module maintainer either make you a co-maintainer or transfer the module to you.

If you can't reach the author for some reason (e.g. email bounces), the PAUSE admins at modules@perl.org can help. The PAUSE admins treat each case individually.

Get a login for the Perl Authors Upload Server (PAUSE) if you don't already have one: http://pause.perl.org

Write to modules@perl.org explaining what you did to contact the current maintainer. The PAUSE admins will also try to reach the maintainer.

Post a public message in a heavily trafficked site announcing your intention to take over the module.

Wait a bit. The PAUSE admins don't want to act too quickly in case the current maintainer is on holiday. If there's no response to private communication or the public post, a PAUSE admin can transfer it to you.

Closure is a computer science term with a precise but hard-to-explain meaning. Usually, closures are implemented in Perl as anonymous subroutines with lasting references to lexical variables outside their own scopes. These lexicals magically refer to the variables that were around when the subroutine was defined (deep binding).

Closures are most often used in programming languages where you can have the return value of a function be itself a function, as you can in Perl. Note that some languages provide anonymous functions but are not capable of providing proper closures: the Python language, for example. For more information on closures, check out any textbook on functional programming. Scheme is a language that not only supports but encourages closures.

The anonymous subroutine returned by add_function_generator() isn't technically a closure because it refers to no lexicals outside its own scope. Using a closure gives you a function template with some customization slots left out to be filled later.

Contrast this with the following make_adder() function, in which the returned anonymous function contains a reference to a lexical variable outside the scope of that function itself. Such a reference requires that Perl return a proper closure, thus locking in for all time the value that the lexical had when the function was created.

Closures are often used for less esoteric purposes. For example, when you want to pass in a bit of code into a function:

my $line;
timeout( 30, sub { $line = <STDIN> } );

If the code to execute had been passed in as a string, '$line = <STDIN>', there would have been no way for the hypothetical timeout() function to access the lexical variable $line back in its caller's scope.

Another use for a closure is to make a variable private to a named subroutine, e.g. a counter that gets initialized at creation time of the sub and can only be modified from within the sub. This is sometimes used with a BEGIN block in package files to make sure a variable doesn't get meddled with during the lifetime of the package:

BEGIN {
my $id = 0;
sub next_id { ++$id }
}

This is discussed in more detail in perlsub, see the entry on Persistent Private Variables.

This problem was fixed in perl 5.004_05, so preventing it means upgrading your version of perl. ;)

Variable suicide is when you (temporarily or permanently) lose the value of a variable. It is caused by scoping through my() and local() interacting with either closures or aliased foreach() iterator variables and subroutine arguments. It used to be easy to inadvertently lose a variable's value this way, but now it's much harder. Take this code:

If you are experiencing variable suicide, that my $f in the subroutine doesn't pick up a fresh copy of the $f whose value is <foo>. The output shows that inside the subroutine the value of $f leaks through when it shouldn't, as in this output:

foobar
foobarbar
foobarbarbar
Finally foo

The $f that has "bar" added to it three times should be a new $fmy $f should create a new lexical variable each time through the loop. The expected output is:

To pass regexes around, you'll need to be using a release of Perl sufficiently recent as to support the qr// construct, pass around strings and use an exception-trapping eval, or else be very, very clever.

Here's an example of how to pass in a string to be regex compared using qr//:

Notice how qr// allows flags at the end. That pattern was compiled at compile time, although it was executed later. The nifty qr// notation wasn't introduced until the 5.005 release. Before that, you had to approach this problem much less intuitively. For example, here it is again if you don't have qr//:

Those preferring to be very, very clever might see the O'Reilly book, Mastering Regular Expressions, by Jeffrey Friedl. Page 273's Build_MatchMany_Function() is particularly interesting. A complete citation of this book is given in perlfaq2.

Perl doesn't have "static" variables, which can only be accessed from the function in which they are declared. You can get the same effect with lexical variables, though.

You can fake a static variable by using a lexical variable which goes out of scope. In this example, you define the subroutine counter, and it uses the lexical variable $count. Since you wrap this in a BEGIN block, $count is defined at compile-time, but also goes out of scope at the end of the BEGIN block. The BEGIN block also ensures that the subroutine and the value it uses is defined at compile-time so the subroutine is ready to use just like any other subroutine, and you can put this code in the same place as other subroutines in the program text (i.e. at the end of the code, typically). The subroutine counter still has a reference to the data, and is the only way you can access the value (and each time you do, you increment the value). The data in chunk of memory defined by $count is private to counter.

In the previous example, you created a function-private variable because only one function remembered its reference. You could define multiple functions while the variable is in scope, and each function can share the "private" variable. It's not really "static" because you can access it outside the function while the lexical variable is in scope, and even create references to it. In this example, increment_count and return_count share the variable. One function adds to the value and the other simply returns the value. They can both access $count, and since it has gone out of scope, there is no other way to access it.

local($x) saves away the old value of the global variable $x and assigns a new value for the duration of the subroutine which is visible in other functions called from that subroutine. This is done at run-time, so is called dynamic scoping. local() always affects global variables, also called package variables or dynamic variables.

my($x) creates a new variable that is only visible in the current subroutine. This is done at compile-time, so it is called lexical or static scoping. my() always affects private variables, also called lexical variables or (improperly) static(ly scoped) variables.

If you know your package, you can just mention it explicitly, as in $Some_Pack::var. Note that the notation $::var is not the dynamic $var in the current package, but rather the one in the "main" package, as though you had written $main::var.

In deep binding, lexical variables mentioned in anonymous subroutines are the same ones that were in scope when the subroutine was created. In shallow binding, they are whichever variables with the same names happen to be in scope when the subroutine is called. Perl always uses deep binding of lexical variables (i.e., those created with my()). However, dynamic variables (aka global, local, or package variables) are effectively shallowly bound. Consider this just one more reason not to use them. See the answer to "What's a closure?".

my() and local() give list context to the right hand side of =. The <FH> read operation, like so many of Perl's functions and operators, can tell which context it was called in and behaves appropriately. In general, the scalar() function can help. This function does nothing to the data itself (contrary to popular myth) but rather tells its argument to behave in whatever its scalar fashion is. If that function doesn't have a defined scalar behavior, this of course doesn't help you (such as with sort()).

To enforce scalar context in this particular case, however, you need merely omit the parentheses:

When you call a function as &foo, you allow that function access to your current @_ values, and you bypass prototypes. The function doesn't get an empty @_--it gets yours! While not strictly speaking a bug (it's documented that way in perlsub), it would be hard to consider this a feature in most cases.

When you call your function as &foo(), then you do get a new @_, but prototyping is still circumvented.

Normally, you want to call a function using foo(). You may only omit the parentheses if the function is already known to the compiler because it already saw the definition (use but not require), or via a forward reference or use subs declaration. Even in this case, you get a clean @_ without any of the old values leaking through where they don't belong.

Here's a simple example of a switch based on pattern matching, lined up in a way to make it look more like a switch statement. We'll do a multiway conditional based on the type of reference stored in $whatchamacallit:

Sometimes you should change the positions of the constant and the variable. For example, let's say you wanted to test which of many answers you were given, but in a case-insensitive way that also allows abbreviations. You can use the following technique if the strings all start with different characters or if you want to arrange the matches so that one takes precedence over another, as "SEND" has precedence over "STOP" here:

Note that starting from version 5.10, Perl has now a native switch statement. See perlsyn.

Starting from Perl 5.8, a source filter module, Switch, can also be used to get switch and case. Its use is now discouraged, because it's not fully compatible with the native switch of Perl 5.10, and because, as it's implemented as a source filter, it doesn't always work as intended when complex syntax is involved.

Some possible reasons: your inheritance is getting confused, you've misspelled the method name, or the object is of the wrong type. Check out perltoot for details about any of the above cases. You may also use print ref($object) to find out the class $object was blessed into.

Another possible reason for problems is because you've used the indirect object syntax (eg, find Guru "Samy") on a class name before Perl has seen that such a package exists. It's wisest to make sure your packages are all defined before you start using them, which will be taken care of if you use the use statement instead of require. If not, make sure to use arrow notation (eg., Guru->find("Samy")) instead. Object notation is explained in perlobj.

You can use embedded POD to discard it. Enclose the blocks you want to comment out in POD markers. The <=begin> directive marks a section for a specific formatter. Use the comment format, which no formatter should claim to understand (by policy). Mark the end of the block with <=end>.

# program is here
=begin comment
all of this stuff
here will be ignored
by everyone
=end comment
=cut
# program continues

The pod directives cannot go just anywhere. You must put a pod directive where the parser is expecting a new statement, not just in the middle of an expression or some other arbitrary grammar production.

Beginners often think they want to have a variable contain the name of a variable.

$fred = 23;
$varname = "fred";
++$$varname; # $fred now 24

This works sometimes, but it is a very bad idea for two reasons.

The first reason is that this technique only works on global variables. That means that if $fred is a lexical variable created with my() in the above example, the code wouldn't work at all: you'd accidentally access the global and skip right over the private lexical altogether. Global variables are bad because they can easily collide accidentally and in general make for non-scalable and confusing code.

Symbolic references are forbidden under the use strict pragma. They are not true references and consequently are not reference counted or garbage collected.

The other reason why using a variable to hold the name of another variable is a bad idea is that the question often stems from a lack of understanding of Perl data structures, particularly hashes. By using symbolic references, you are just using the package's symbol-table hash (like %main::) instead of a user-defined hash. The solution is to use your own hash or a real reference instead.

There we're using the %USER_VARS hash instead of symbolic references. Sometimes this comes up in reading strings from the user with variable references and wanting to expand them to the values of your perl program's variables. This is also a bad idea because it conflates the program-addressable namespace and the user-addressable one. Instead of reading a string and expanding it to the actual contents of your program's own variables:

it would be better to keep a hash around like %USER_VARS and have variable references actually refer to entries in that hash:

$str =~ s/\$(\w+)/$USER_VARS{$1}/g; # no /e here at all

That's faster, cleaner, and safer than the previous approach. Of course, you don't need to use a dollar sign. You could use your own scheme to make it less confusing, like bracketed percent symbols, etc.

$str = 'this has a %fred% and %barney% in it';
$str =~ s/%(\w+)%/$USER_VARS{$1}/g; # no /e here at all

Another reason that folks sometimes think they want a variable to contain the name of a variable is because they don't know how to build proper data structures using hashes. For example, let's say they wanted two hashes in their program: %fred and %barney, and that they wanted to use another scalar variable to refer to those by name.

This is still a symbolic reference, and is still saddled with the problems enumerated above. It would be far better to write:

$folks{"fred"}{WIFE} = "wilma";
$folks{"barney"}{WIFE} = "betty";

And just use a multilevel hash to start with.

The only times that you absolutely must use symbolic references are when you really must refer to the symbol table. This may be because it's something that can't take a real reference to, such as a format name. Doing so may also be important for method calls, since these always go through the symbol table for resolution.

In those cases, you would turn off strict 'refs' temporarily so you can play around with the symbol table. For example:

All those functions (red(), blue(), green(), etc.) appear to be separate, but the real code in the closure actually was compiled only once.

So, sometimes you might want to use symbolic references to directly manipulate the symbol table. This doesn't matter for formats, handles, and subroutines, because they are always global--you can't use my() on them. For scalars, arrays, and hashes, though--and usually for subroutines-- you probably only want to use hard references.

The "bad interpreter" message comes from the shell, not perl. The actual message may vary depending on your platform, shell, and locale settings.

If you see "bad interpreter - no such file or directory", the first line in your perl script (the "shebang" line) does not contain the right path to perl (or any other program capable of running scripts). Sometimes this happens when you move the script from one machine to another and each machine has a different path to perl--/usr/bin/perl versus /usr/local/bin/perl for instance. It may also indicate that the source machine has CRLF line terminators and the destination machine has LF only: the shell tries to find /usr/bin/perl<CR>, but can't.

If you see "bad interpreter: Permission denied", you need to make your script executable.

In either case, you should still be able to run the scripts with perl explicitly:

% perl script.pl

If you get a message like "perl: command not found", perl is not in your PATH, which might also mean that the location of perl is not where you expect it so you need to adjust your shebang line.

This documentation is free; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

Irrespective of its distribution, all code examples in this file are hereby placed into the public domain. You are permitted and encouraged to use this code in your own programs for fun or for profit as you see fit. A simple comment in the code giving credit would be courteous but is not required.